


cerulean

by GingerBeer42



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Gen, Internal Monologue, I’m sorry, Not A Fix-It, all the gOOD prose is them lmao, and excessive prose about the color of the sky, but betaed by my overpowered friend, bye then, does this count as angst, not brit-picked, now including immortality rants, oh look more of my weird-ass doctor who fic, sorry - Freeform, whoops ranting in the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24614701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerBeer42/pseuds/GingerBeer42
Summary: “Earth’s sky was blue.“It was as far removed from the deep orange backdrop of his own long-lost planet as any colour could be, but rather ironically it had come to symbolize home for him.”Near the conclusion of “Journey’s End”, the Doctor reflects.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	cerulean

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, yet another introspective internal monologue fic for an already existing canon scene. So fight me.
> 
> Betaed by [Andromicat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromicat). Actually, no, essentially co-written by them. [No. You are not putting this here. No. -Andromicat]. Haha, sIKE I put it in. Sorry for making you look through my terrible prose lmao.

Earth’s sky was blue.

It was a result of the composition of the atmosphere and the way the nearly pure white light of the Sun interacted with it. That blue, so familiar and welcoming, painted the sky in elegant shades that varied from deep azure to palest periwinkle; it was as far removed from the deep orange backdrop and delicate silvery clouds of his own long-lost planet as any colour could be, but rather ironically it as well had come to symbolize home for him. 

The exact shade of the sky varied with time and weather, like the gentle push and pull of life on Earth, the rhythms of life and death, night and day. But currently the billowing white clouds dotted an uninterrupted expanse of light cerulean blue: the very picture of perfect weather. 

For now, that was. Later, the atmospheric disturbance caused by hauling the Earth halfway across the universe and back would make its presence known, and the aggravated heavens would convey their displeasure in a torrential downpour.

He paused to consider that sentence. That had been awfully poetic, for him.

Returning to the point he’d been trying to make, while the weather would turn wonky and catastrophic later in the day, heralding weeks of hurricanes and squalls and thunderstorms, the Earth would be able to enjoy a few hours of blue skies first, before the inevitable storm came. The planet deserved that at least.

Church bells rang joyfully in the distance as the human race celebrated the return of the Earth. On the other side of the planet, fireworks were being set off as the entire population breathed a collective sigh of relief. The Dalek invasion of 2009, thwarted. 

The Doctor leaned against his TARDIS, watching his Children of Time disperse. He didn’t know if he would see them again — and he  _ despised _ not knowing. 

The first to leave was Sarah Jane, back to her son — he’d have to get her to tell him  _ that _ story sometime — and K9, fighting the good fight from their little house in Ealing. 

She was right, he knew. Over his long life and all his travels, he’d inadvertently made quite a few friends. Incredibly loyal and brilliant ones, if today’s events were anything to go by. The true companions that he didn’t quite deserve, after all he’d done to them. And yet here they all were, loyal to the end, saving the world once again. 

_ Lonely _ wasn’t quite the right word for him anymore. 

He was, after all, no longer alone. 

The next departures were Mickey Smith and Martha Jones. It seemed rather fitting that the two people hurt most by his arrogance and blindness had wound up parting hand-in-hand. 

He’d never treated Mickey right, in all the years he’d known the man. Probably because he’d first encountered him straight after the War had ended; unlike Rose, Mickey never really managed to mesh with the previous Doctor’s prickly personality, and that dislike had carried over during the regeneration. Though that was no excuse. 

Yet, despite all the condescending glares the Doctor’d shot at him, despite all the malicious misnaming and outright insults, Mickey had managed to grow into the person he was today, someone who could confidently make decisions that he wouldn’t even have dared consider in 2005. 

And Martha… She’d got the short end of the stick, travelling with him while he was still in his post-Rose funk. And then the Master had happened, and  _ that _ was a year he was really better off not thinking about. 

But she’d moved on, something that almost none of his companions ever managed to do. She’d called him out on his mistakes and the way he’d been leading her on, and she’d walked away of her own volition, back to the life she’d put on hold to travel with him.

A while back, she’d called the TARDIS phone again, this time asking to come with them for a while. She’d never fully explained why, and the Doctor had never asked, but Donna gradually pieced the story together: a mission had gone wrong, and Tom had been caught in the crossfire. The higher-ups at UNIT didn’t blame her, but she’d needed some time off. A whole lot of running later, they’d dropped her back off at UNIT, ready to start again.

Martha Jones and Mickey Smith. The Doctor had no idea what those two were going to do now, but he knew they would be  _ brilliant _ . And they were going with Jack; that’d be a fearsome trio.

Captain Jack Harkness. Another person he’d severely screwed over (it seemed to be a habit for this particular incarnation). 

Immortality was not an appealing concept, and especially not Jack’s particular brand of it. To die again and again, remembering everything, not knowing when he could finally be at peace…

And maybe eventually mutating into a giant head.

He wouldn’t wish that existence on anyone. So many longed for eternal life, never grasping how  _ terrifying _ it could be. Never grasping how it could feel, to be so  _ alone,  _ reaching,  _ begging  _ for an end they would never reach. Watching as time slipped through your outstretched fingers like so many grains of sand, as the people around you melted and vanished, faster and faster until you were the only one left. The expression “the sands of time” had much more meaning than people assumed it did. 

In some ways, a brief mayfly existence was a blessing. As he’d told Professor Lazarus, the only certainty of a long life was that one would inevitably live it alone. 

Jack wasn’t supposed to have happened. No one in all creation should have been able to harness the power of the Vortex like that, let alone bestow immortality using it. It hurt even to  _ look _ at Jack, the sheer  _ fixedness _ and impossibility of the man’s existence assaulting his Time sense. 

It  _ didn’t _ hurt, however, to return Jack’s salute. The Doctor had done some research into Torchwood Cardiff since the Year, and he had to admire them, dealing with the flotsam and jetsam and odd gigantic life-draining demons that turned up from the Rift. He would have to pop in and meet them properly sometime. 

The fixed points in their future, however… Not for the first time, and almost certainly not for the last, the Doctor wished he could rewrite time, to spare his friend the pain. 

Jack would survive, though. He always did.

That left Rose, Jackie, and Donna. 

He knew what he had to do. For Rose. He’d taken the other him aside during the celebrations and explained it all, slipping a chunk of TARDIS coral into the other’s hand. The excuse he’d thought up, that the other Doctor was too dangerous and volatile to be left on his own, was technically true. But also… it was silly, but he hoped, rather selfishly perhaps, that maybe some part of him would finally be able to be happy. With her.

He hoped it worked out, the two of them. 

And then there was Donna. 

He didn’t want to think about that. Not quite yet. For once, he wanted to look back.

He’d hurt so many people over his long life, destroyed so many lives, and he would doubtless continue to do so. The danger that followed him everywhere he went didn’t spare someone merely because he liked them; often, that just made things worse. How many times had someone he’d barely met sacrificed their lives, or their happiness, to save him?

_ How many have died in your name? _

They were brave, they were always  _ so _ brave. And therein lay the problem: that bravery was part of the reason why he liked them in the first place. 

Everyone died, someday. He knew that better than most, because  _ he _ couldn’t. He was cursed to live on, to watch as the world turned to dust in his hands, never able to  _ properly _ interfere for terror of permanently breaking time.

The curse of the Time Lords.

But for that one brief, shining moment, all his friends, his family, giddy with the joy of having saved all of creation, rejoiced together, under that cerulean sky.

And the Doctor was content.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah uh have this random introspective internal monologue thing I thought up instead of working on [WARNING: CLASSIFIED] and [REDACTED INFORMATION]. Whoops. 
> 
> I’ve been wanting to write something trying to explain the Martha / Mickey pair-up in “End of Time” for a while now, as well as the conVENIENT absCENCE of a certain Tom Milligan. So, this was my attempt. A bad attempt, but an attempt nonetheless.
> 
> Loved it? Hated it? Want to throw me in front of a Dalek?? Feel free to attack me in the comments below.


End file.
